


Left Behind

by koalathebear



Category: Convoy 19: A Zombie Novel
Genre: Books, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-03-22 12:19:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3728719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koalathebear/pseuds/koalathebear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Although bitten and left to die by Convoy 19, Private Stenson discovers that there might still be a shred of hope for him ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Post-Bite

**Author's Note:**

> I really enjoyed the Mark Rivett zombie novel [**Convoy 19**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23790950-convoy-19) but hated the fate of poor, heroic Private Stenson - so decided to write my own story-line for him. Absolutely no disrespect is meant to the author. Part of the first chapter of this fic is from the book, the rest is my own speculation.
> 
> As far as I can tell, this book has a fandom of one (me), but I'm an enthusiastic fan!

Private Stenson took a running jump, and he reached up to catch the top edge of the second storey clinic. A swarm of zombies burst onto the ground floor roof of the music store behind him. He pulled himself up with a grunt, and he dragged his body onto the ledge. Dozens of howling monsters reached after him in frustration as he crawled exhausted onto the elevated clinic roof.

Well out of reach of the angry horde, Stenson rolled onto his back and gazed up at the blue sky. Every part of him wanted to rest…to stay there and let exhaustion have its way with him. Sleep deprived and pushed to his physical limits, he let fatigue win for a moment. While the bright California sun warmed his weary body, the clamour of the undead swarm seemed to fade into the wind.

When he felt he had rested enough, Stenson crawled over to the front of the clinic. He leaned against a ventilation shaft and looked out over the lot. Thousands of undead were packed into the blacktop. They were moaning, staring blankly off into space, and wandering aimlessly. The gun towers that had once guarded the DDC resembled old stilt houses that rose from a rolling ocean of gray undead. The fence that had surrounded the DDC lay in twisted ruin.

“What are you gonna do with that, Private?” The first real conversation he’d had with the Tierrasanta DDC sergeant rang in his memory.

“That’s my magic bullet, sir!” He had replied with a smile. The sergeant had asked for a daily inventory of all the ammunition in the DDC, and every day Private Stenson had reported all the ammunition he carried on him – including a single Beretta pistol clip containing a single 9mm round. The number stood out in the reports, and eventually, the sergeant had gotten around to asking him about it.

The sergeant smiled and nodded. “Sometimes things get so fucked up that all you have are bullets.”

“Just making sure I have the bullet I need if things get too fucked up, sir,” Stenson replied.

Since that day, other soldiers had taken to carrying “magic bullets.” Some had them on necklaces…others had them on key chains or even bandoleers, but only a handful understood what a magic bullet was. They kept them in special clips that were separate from their combat ammunition.

Stenson closed his eyes and sighed as he rolled up a pant leg to examine his wound. During the morning’s escape from the quiet room and subsequent climb to the music store roof, he had felt the sharp pinch of jaws closing around his ankle. It was barely hard enough to hurt, barely hard enough to break the skin, but it was hard enough. It had only taken a few hours for the tiny gash to spread black spider veins up his leg and numb his foot. Now, his entire lower leg was the same grey-green pallid rubber of necrotic flesh. He had kept the wound secret all day. Doomed as he was, he could still help, and there was no use in scaring everyone.

He sighed, fished a cigarette out of his pocket, lit it, and took a deep drag. After he had covered the convoy’s escape, he had fought his way out of the clinic office through a rampaging onslaught of ghouls…without being bitten. He had shot and stabbed his way through a long hallway crawling with undead without so much as a scratch. Finally, he had made it to the music store roof and then to the clinic roof untouched. All that was for naught, however, given the ankle bite he had already received. It felt so unfair that his fate would be determined by such a small thing – a split-second where he was a little too slow…and some random ghoul had been just fast enough.

Reaching into his right pocket, he felt for the hard metal clip where he kept his magic bullet. His other hand reached for his sidearm, popped the empty clip out, and replaced it with the new one. After giving his sidearm to Liam in the quiet room, his first order of business had been to acquire a replacement. It made him cringe to loot the corpses of his comrades, but there had been no other choice. He then proceeded to spend all his ammunition on the defence of the convoy’s escape. Now, only his magic bullet remained.

He took another long drag from his cigarette before tossing the butt into the undead ocean below and lighting another one.

A million doubts ran through his head. What if he hadn’t been bitten? He hadn’t actually seen the zombie bite him, he reflected. What if he was just in some sort of shock? What if he was sleep deprived and making a dumb decision? What if the wound he thought was a bite was merely another gash from slamming into the broken window? What if there was a cure in the fleet? If he just waited long enough, maybe his immune system could fight off the infection.

Stenson closed his eyes and pushed the doubts away. He forced himself to alter his perspective. He was lucky. A lot of people, soldiers and civilians, didn’t have magic bullets. Billions of people all around the world were doomed to walk the earth as monsters. He didn’t have to be, and for that, he was grateful. He had given all he had and succeeded in saving civilian lives – children’s lives. Few people were so lucky.

“Sometimes things get so fucked up that all you have are bullets,” he growled.

With little hesitation, he brought his arm up and placed the barrel of his gun against his temple.

*

"Hey wait up soldier!" a voice called out and he stiffened, turning his head in the direction of the voice.

Standing on a roof-top on the building next to the clinic were two figures who were studying him closely. One was a young woman in jeans, dark hoodie and sandshoes and the other was a young man in a baseball cap, jeans and dirty sweat-shirt. "No need to blow your brains out yet," the dark-eyed woman told him.

He rolled up his pant leg to show them the rapidly blackening flesh. "I've been bit ma'am, there's no hope for me."

The two of them glanced at one another. "It ain't over till it's over," the youth told him. "Come with us."

Frowning, Stenson rose to his feet and jogged towards them, leaping easily over the narrow gap despite his injured ankle. 

"You're taking a risk," he told them.

The young woman rolled her eyes at him and gestured at the horde below them on the ground. "How's that different from every second of the day, soldier?" she asked him and feeling a little perplexed, he followed behind them as they ran lightly across the roof-tops.

"You were in the DDC?" the youth asked him and Stenson nodded.

"Part of the first military group to arrive and have been there ever since …"

"Till the assholes left you behind," the youth remarked and Stenson shrugged.

"It wasn't deliberate – they were pulling out and it was an escape. And you?"

"We weren't allowed in – they closed the doors to me and my friends and left us to die," the youth told him with a shrug.

It wasn't a surprising tale. The DDC had become full very early during the outbreak and thousands had been turned away … There had been no choice – but it hadn't made things easier.

"So why were you hanging around here?" he asked curiously.

The girl glanced at him. "We heard chatter over the airwaves that a convoy was coming through … a chance of evac to the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan so we came to check it out." She pulled a face. "We knew as soon as we saw the convoy that we were better off where we were."

Stenson was inclined to agree. At least on land, there was a possibility of running away – a lot of the ships at sea had become floating coffins. All it took was one WD and the whole ship could be lost, no matter how vast and when you were out on the ocean – there was nowhere to run. He'd heard the stories. If a ship’s crew could get the situation under control, then the survivors had a chance. Sometimes, they could not and there standing orders to sink a boat that could not be brought under full control. The resources required to retake a ship were simply not available, and rescue attempts often resulted in infections spreading to other ships after operations were complete. There were once ten U.S. supercarrier strike groups. Three had their crews succumb to zombie infestation in the early days of the outbreak, and they now floated aimlessly through the oceans as titanic ghost ships inhabited by thousands of hungry zombies. Two more had been scuttled because of an inability to get undead outbreaks under control. The USS Harry Truman was the third supercarrier destroyed in naval combat. Of the original ten, only two super carriers remained.

The convoys were now at an end. Convoy 19 that had rescued Dr D was the last of the convoys. Command had made a decision to pull out the remaining ground forces out, ration the resources they had and leave the mainland for a while. The fleet was running out of food, already stretched thin trying to feed the battle group, let alone the civilian fleet which was almost entirely devoid of long-term food stores. Drinkable water was in short supply and the fleet's imperative was to reestablish a mainland base that had area enough to farm. Stenson had been left behind to face certain death.

"Hurry up soldier, we want to get back before dark," she told him. The youth rushed ahead and helped them both take a slightly wider jump and he followed as they both scrambled down the side of a building to what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse at the edge of town.

There was a large wire fence around the area. "Surely that doesn't keep them out."

"No, we just try to be real quiet," the girl told him. He walked with them into the warehouse, eyes blinking as he stared around into the darkness.

"That you, Leigh?" a voice called out softly.

"Yes," the girl replied. "I've got Mouse and a soldier with us from the DDC …"

"He's been bit," the youth named Mouse called out and a ladder came down from above. 

"You first, soldier," the girl named Leigh told him and after a moment's hesitation, Stenson climbed up the ladder. They had more to lose than him. He was already starting to feel the effects of the virus – pain throbbing in his ankle, the fever coursing its way through his blood like a brush fire.

Once he reached the top, he was startled to see half a dozen people waiting at the top for him – people of varying ages and appearance. The man at the front of the crowd was in his late fifties, dark hair streaked liberally with grey. His light blue eyes raked over Stenson, taking in his youth, his strength and the flush of fever on his cheeks.

"How long ago were you bit, son?" he asked him kindly.

"This morning, sir … there's nothing that can be done for me."

"You a doctor as well as a soldier, son?" he asked with a smile and Stenson shook his head.

"No, sir but – "

"Take him to the infirmary," he instructed the others who nodded.

The infirmary barely deserved such a name, being a small corner of the loft that smelled of disinfectant. There was another patient in the room, hand-cuffed to his bed, a gag over his mouth to stop his noises. The bite on his arm was apparent but the man was sleeping peacefully despite the bite.

Leigh indicated the spare bed. "Take off your socks, boots, pants and jacket," she ordered him.

"Why miss, we've just met," he tried to joke but her face was cold and humourless. He stripped down quickly to his underwear and lifted his wrist obediently so that she could cuff him to the bed. He didn’t bother to make bondage jokes. "Miss – there's a knife in my boot … when I turn, please make sure you put it through my skull." 

"Have a bit more faith in Doctor Flannery, soldier," Leigh told him curtly. "But it's fine – I've got my own," she told him and showed him the blade that was strapped to her thigh.

"Mine's better," he quipped and rested his head on the pillow gratefully. The world was starting to spin … "What's that?" he asked, glancing over as she approached him with a syringe.

"We need to you sedated for the treatment. Trust me – if we wanted to kill you, we would have already," she told him with a faintly wry smile.

"Remember – if I turn - " he didn't get a chance to finish his sentence.

*

Since the start of the outbreak, Stenson had had his fair share of nightmares – everyone had. Life itself was one protracted, living nightmare. This one was the king of all nightmares and had him writhing and screaming. It wasn't just the pain – the images that danced before his eyes were terrifying … gaping maws, reaching hands, blood and the smell of decaying flesh was everywhere. He imagined his two sisters ripped to pieces before him. He imagined his father's face … haggard with eyes that had seen too much.

The bite on his ankle was on fire and his wrist twisted against the hand cuffs as he attempted to pull himself away from the bed. "Easy soldier … it'll get worse before it gets better," he heard a voice tell him. His eyes felt hot and staring up blindly into the face of the young woman whose name he could scarcely recall, he felt a blood lust rising in him … a hunger to devour her flesh and taste the hotness of her blood.

_"Do you think he'll make it, doctor?"_

_"He's young and strong – a prime candidate for recovery …"_

He felt cool hands touch his face, wipe the perspiration from his skin. The dark-eyed girl seemed to remain by his side through the whole ordeal and he heard her speaking with the doctor … with Mouse … with others.

*

Everything hurt.

Stenson opened his eyes to a pounding headache and an ankle that was throbbing uncontrollably. His wrist was also red and raw from the strain placed on it by the hand cuff.

"Good morning, Private Stenson," a pleasant voice spoke and he stared into the face of the tall doctor.

"Thought you weren't going to make it," a voice commented from his bedside and he turned to look into Mouse's grinning face. Brown hair poked out from beneath the baseball cap and the youth still wore the same dirty sweat shirt. He smelled a little ripe but his grin was pleasant and his hazel eyes were friendly.

The doctor reached up to unlock the handcuffs and Stenson stared at him in shock. "Sir – "

"It's fine," the doctor reassured him.

"How long have I been out?"

"Over 48 hours," the doctor replied, carefully disinfecting the private's raw skin before putting a light bandage around the raw wrist.

"How is that possible?" he demanded in shock. Ordinarily, a person died and reanimated within 24 hours of a bite, sooner depending on fitness and health … He'd never heard of anyone who hadn't turned after 48 hours.

"It's not easy, but it's possible," the doctor told him. 

Stenson looked down. There were also bandages around his arms and on both ankles. He was relieved to see he still had a foot. Many had tried to stop the spread of infection with amputation and he would not have been at all surprised to have woken up to find himself with one foot less …

As the doctor unwrapped his wounds to check his injuries, he stared in perplexity at the injuries on both ankles. There were fresh cuts on his flesh, deep cuts.

"We bled you – several times a day … doing our best to drain out the worst of the contaminated blood. Then we transfused you with fresh blood."

Stenson frowned. "That doesn't work – it's been tried. Dr Damico tried it back at the DDC and all the attempts to transfuse uncontaminated blood still resulted in death and reanimation."

"I said fresh blood, not uncontaminated," Dr Flannery told him dryly as he rebandaged the young soldiers right ankle and then examined his left ankle. The necrotic flesh had transformed and become healthy, pink flesh again – the darkening veins gone, the blackening reversed.

"Dr Damico said that attempts to induce immunity to injecting small quantities of contaminated blood also resulted in infection, death and reanimation."

"We can answer all your questions when you're stronger, young man," the doctor told him with a smile. 

"Where's the girl?" he asked them suddenly. "I didn't hurt her, did I?"

"Not directly," the doctor told him and Stenson's head snapped up in concern.

The doctor smiled "A lot of the blood transfused into you was Leigh's – she was the most compatible donor. She donated a lot more than I thought prudent, but she's always been a stubborn lass. She's resting now."

"I'm here," a voice said from the doorway and Stenson looked up to see Leigh standing in the doorway. She was extremely pale, her black hair a contrast to her white skin.

"Sit down before you fall down, Leigh," the doctor told her and gestured for the both of them to be brought hot soup and crackers.

"No miss – please feed yourself first," Stenson tried to insist when Leigh started to hold the spoonful of broth to his lips.

"Suit yourself," she told him, eating a few of the crackers and draining her mug of soup quickly. A faint colour returned to her cheeks and then she began to feed him. It was a little embarrassing to be fed but he had to assume that a lot more embarrassing had happened while he was sick and feverish.

"Who are Elsie and Karen?" she asked him.

"My sisters," he replied in a low voice. Clearly he had rambled during his delirium.

"We gagged you at one point so that you didn't attracted the walkers towards us … but I did hear a little bit before that," she told him with an apology in her voice. "I take it both are dead?"

"Elise is dead," he confirmed. "Karen went missing … haven't heard from my parents since the beginning of the outbreak," he told her. It was a common story. 

"Same as Mouse over there," Leigh said, gesturing towards the boy who sat on the other side of the bed.

"My family are all in LA – I was here visiting friends … haven't heard from them since," Mouse said with a shrug, his feigned nonchalance fooling no one and they all pretended they didn't see the shimmer of unshed tears in his eyes.

"Is it really possible that a cure has been found?" Stenson asked wonderingly. 

Leigh put the mug of soup down and shoved a cracker in his mouth which he chewed obediently. She rolled up the sleeve of her shirt and he stared at the scars on her arm. Human bites marked her upper arm … distorted scar tissue twisted and shiny. 

"Mouse." The boy rolled up his jeans and showed him a vicious looking scar on his left calf.

"Doesn't always work," Leigh told him briefly. "Some of those we've tried to save died anyway … depends how far along you are .. how healthy you were … but the doctor discovered that if he drained out as much of the contaminated blood as he could and transfused the blood of someone who had recovered from a bite … there was a chance –a small chance that you might survive – and become resistant."

"Holy fuck," Stenson breathed. "Why haven't you told anyone?"

"Who'd we tell? Our comms are one-way – we can hear the chatter, not the other way around. Besides, none of us fancy being dissected … drained dry for the greater good," Leigh said with a wry smile. Though her lips were pale from her recent blood-loss, her mouth was full and expressive and Stenson liked her smile, liked the smoothness of her pale ivory skin. She was wasn't beautiful … she wasn’t even pretty but she had nice even features, expressive eyes and mouth and a low pitched voice that was oddly attractive.

"Why'd you save me?" he asked abruptly.

"We go scouting – looking for people to join our group who might be of use. Who might be able to help. I saw the way you sacrificed yourself for those people on that convoy – you're a good guy and that's pretty rare these days. There's more people out there who are more monstrous than the walking dead."

"Leigh said you were like a hero," Mouse chimed in, as Leigh told him to shut up, a flush of pink on her pale cheeks.

"If we can get the doctor to a lab … he thinks he might be able to make a cure – something that doesn’t require transfusions .. something that can be used on more people."

"Wow," Stenson breathed, leaning back against the pillows and staring up at the dusty, rusty ceiling of the warehouse. It was a lot to take in.

"So where are you from, soldier?" Leigh asked him.

"Nebraska," he replied, thinking back with an ache of his family's farm.

"Farm boy?" she asked him with a wry smile and he nodded.

"That obvious?"

"Yeah – the aw shucks farm boy is clear even through the uniform," she told him. She reached out to touch his forehead, her fingers cool and steady. "Fever's almost gone," she said approvingly.

"Thanks for the blood," he told her and she nodded and gave a smile.

"You owe me big time, soldier," she told him.

"My name's Michael," he told her and she smiled again.

"Care for some more soup, soldier?" she asked him and he smiled back ruefully and nodded as she spooned more soup into his mouth.

For the first time since the outbreak, he felt a flicker of what might have been hope – or even happiness …


	2. Resistant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stenson starts to find his place in the group

His strength returned gradually and he was frustrated by how weak he was in the initial stages.

"The virus is still fighting inside of you, son," Dr Flannery had explained to him kindly. "You need to rest and get your strength back – otherwise you're no good to any of us, including yourself."

"Are you also immune now, doctor?" Stenson had asked the older man curiously.

Flannery smiled sadly and nodded, holding up his left hand – showing the bite marks of a child on his wrist. "Many of the people in this group are resistant now. We've lost more than we've saved, though," he told Stenson. He paused for a long moment, swallowed hard before speaking again. "Not everyone survives the process. The old …" his voice faltered. "…the very young, the weak – their bodies can't take it and we lose them." 

"Who treated you when you were bitten?" Stenson questioned.

"Leigh – she'd watched me do it before … I walked her through as much of it as I could before I passed out. She did me proud," Flannery told him. 

"She a doctor, too?"

"No – she tells me she was a college drop out before the outbreak," Flannery told him with a smile. "Now rest – Mouse and Leigh will take turns looking after you until you are back to full strength."

Sure enough, the two young people took turns. Mouse was the more chatty of the two, telling him everything about himself – his family, his friends, his impressions of the world. Leigh was far more quiet, keeping her stories to herself and asking him about his experiences at the DDC.

She was a good listener and without meaning to, he told her far more than he intended. He told her that there had been over a dozen patients in varying stages of terminal illness that along with the healthy had sought refuge within the Tierrasanta DDC. All had been hooked to medical equipment that carefully monitored their vital signs. When the apocalypse began and the public health system broke down, critically and terminally ill people had been moved between hospitals and hospice care before finally arriving at various DDCs around the city. 

Nurses, doctors, and clinicians, who were charged with the responsibility for screening occupants, rationing access to healthcare services, and managing supplies and medicine, were faced with what seemed like an unanswerable moral dilemma? In a world where the dead rose to murder the living, what should be done with the terminally ill? It was already extremely difficult to turn away someone who had clearly been bitten by the walking dead and had only a few hours or days before the infection took them. Working in a DDC, required staff to make impossible decisions, but dumping a dying cancer patient into the street to be torn apart so someone else could have their cot, simply wasn’t going to happen.

"The last guy I looked after was a guy in his late thirties named Liam – brave as hell. He'd been on the organ donor list waiting for a kidney for over two years." 

She listened as he told her about Liam's situation. When the dead stopped staying dead, organ donations ceased, and everyone on earth waiting for a liver, lung, or heart, was served a double dose of hopelessness. Not only was the world falling apart, but the terminally ill were also guaranteed to join the mindless legions tearing it down eventually. As bleak as things were, and despite all the horror around them, someone who was healthy could still cling to some tiny shred of hope. For the extremely ill, there was none.

"When they got to a really bad stage, we had to quarantine them for everyone's safety … " 

At its height, the Tierrasanta DDC had housed seventy-nine occupants. Within the back office area, had been a soundproofed room that had been used to record music or shelter office workers from the trendy pop tunes blasting up front. After the outbreak, that room was used as an execution chamber.

Dealing with the terminally ill was bad enough, but it was the toll this task had taken on the few remaining soldiers that was unbearable. A few weeks before the arrival of Convoy 19, another convoy had arrived and requisitioned the bulk of the remaining ammunition. Up to that point, the deceased would be shot in the head to ensure they would not reanimate. They would then be removed from the soundproof room, and dumped out a window onto a pile of corpses that was well out of view of anyone within the DDC. It was a barbaric task that had visibly numbed all involved. When they became low on ammo, the soldiers had taken to using combat knives to do the dirty work, and it was a responsibility that they drew straws to avoid.

"That must have been hard for you, soldier," Leigh said gently. Stenson nodded. He remembered the stillness, standing in the corner of the room as the soldiers had set Liam’s cot down in the soundproof room and then left. He'd been left there, standing in the darkness with a knife on his hand wondering when he would have to bury the knife in the other man's head.

Dr Kelly Damico had at times referred to him as one of the warriors who had protected the DDC from the wandering dead outside. Days like that, he'd felt more like an executioner – a murderer. 

"It was hell," he admitted. Everyone had seen the living transform into the living dead, but putting down people they had known was very different. There was something that deadened the soul watching the weakest and most vulnerable lay helpless, as death took them and the infection of undeath took control. The quicker it happened, the better, and the quieter, the better.

"What happened to Liam?" she asked him.

Stenson turned quiet. "He gave his life so that we could escape … said he'd spent the entire disaster on the sidelines – he asked for my gun and stayed behind so that me and a few others could escape to the roof … " He could still remember the sound of the final shot, the fifteenth shot that Liam had used to stop himself becoming one of the undead.

_Let me die, Private. Let me die for something good._

"That's all we can hope for in these times, soldier – a good death."

"I thought we were hoping for a cure."

Leigh shrugged. "We're resistant but the Undead can still rip us to shreds and we'll still die …" Haltingly, she told him of a few missions where some of their group had grown a little cocky because of their resistance to the virus … only to be torn apart by a horde of hungry WDs. Like everyone else who was still alive, Leigh's nightmares were full of blood and screams.

When Stenson's ankle had healed enough, she walked with him around the compound. Technically they had the whole warehouse at their disposal and it was surrounded by a high wire fence which during the day they patrolled and reinforced. Nonetheless, at night, all of them climbed the ladder to the loft area of the warehouse.

"What would happen if the dead got in here and blocked off your escape down there?" he asked. 

She walked him to one end of the loft, to a series of windows. "We jump from here – over to that building there and get onto the roof where it's safe. The walkers can't get up there," she told him. "Then when things are safe again, we come back and retake the place."

She pointed at the weapons store, a pile of machetes, long knives, baseball bats, axes, crossbows … There were guns but these were only used as a last resort because of the noise. 

"Bags are there for packing supplies for when we need to leave in a hurry," she pointed at the corner.

"Sounds like you've done it before."

"A few times," she told him briefly. The flicker of sadness in her dark eyes told him that each time it had happened, they had lost good people.

"Power?" he asked her curiously. When the fleet had evacuated, they had also evacuated the San Onofre plant and cut off power to the DDCs. Thousands of people in Southern California depended on that energy but there was no ability to safely manage nuclear waste material, there was a high likelihood – almost a certainty that San Onofre would eventually succumb to a rogue civilian attack or be overwhelmed by the Dead.

"I guess that's the last thing we needed – a nuclear power plant meltdown. Good thing unlike the DDCs we were never on the grid anyway," Leigh remarked. She showed him where they had their own generator, the solar panels that had been scavenged and installed by Sam and Cally – two others in their group as well as a series of portable solar mats that had been liberated from a camping store.

With the solar panels they were able to power a salvaged hot water heater and a small refrigerator. "We've got solar rechargeable batteries for our flashlights and walkie talkies."

On an adjoining roof-top, they had a small home garden where they were growing fruits, vegetables and a number of herbs to be used for first aid and to treat illnesses. 

She leaned back and studied him narrowly. His short brown hair was lightened by the sun and his dark blue eyes shadowed with memories like the rest of them. Tall and strong, he had a steady gaze and a calm, reassuring strength to him. She had trusted him the moment she had seen him and this feeling was only reinforced the longer she knew him.

He sat with her in the infirmary, helping her roll bandages and prepare medication. "There's still medication in the DDC," he told her. "And other supplies."

"The place is overrun," she told him. "Mouse and a few others went there just yesterday and it's still crawling with walkers."

"When I'm able – I'll go on a scouting run … we had pain killers, bandages … antibiotics …" he promised her.

"We didn't spend all this time and effort – and me give you all my blood – just so that you can get yourself killed, soldier," she told him grimly

He watched as she sterilised the surgical implements by boiling them in water. There was a large rainwater tank and the group had the luxury of being able to bathe and also potable water. The plumbing to the toilets no longer self-flushed but could be flushed with buckets of water so they managed to keep their surroundings sanitary. Non-rainwater was run through a charcoal filter.

"How did you guys learn how to do all of this?" he asked her curiously. 

She grimaced and walked over to the far wall where she picked up a small tablet that had been charging using one of the solar power chargers. 

"That?" he demanded.

She nodded ruefully. "When things started to go to crap – it occurred to me that I knew pretty much nothing about how to survive … so I downloaded every single ebook or internet page I could find to do with survivalism … power, water, food, basic first aid, medicine … makeshift machinery … It's all here."

"I'm impressed."

"We salvaged a few more tablets and made back-ups … I guess I was lucky there wasn't an EMP."

"Yeah, we were real lucky to get zombies instead," Stenson remarked dryly.

The woman who cooked for them all was a middle aged woman named Monica who managed to make delicious meals out of almost nothing at all on the small solar oven. With her light blonde hair pulled back in a pony tail and her large blue eyes, she was pretty in a motherly way. She smiled at him but never said a word.

"She doesn’t talk anymore," Mouse had told him. "She did when she first got here but her two daughters were eaten in front of her – she stopped talking after that. Doc Flannery says she might speak again one day … or maybe not." 

He slowly met the others in the group – Dean and Ken, a couple of young teen brothers who had grown up too fast. Lean and lanky with pale eyes and dirty blond hair. They were alert and nervous like everyone else in the group. "You a soldier?" Dean asked him finally and he nodded.

"Dad was, too," Ken told him, the tense speaking volumes. Like the others, they did their share, too. Patrolling the perimeter, cleaning up in the yard, helping out in the infirmary.

"What's Leigh's role in this place?" he asked Mouse one day and Mouse stared at him like he was insane.

"She's like … our glue. She taught most of us hand to hand combat … she's a fighter … she leads the scouting missions .. Doc Flannery's kind of in charge but Leigh helps him run things."

"Where did she learn to fight?" he asked curiously.

Mouse shrugged. "Beats me … the doc says she came out of the foster system – that made her tough. She says she was born fighting."

It gave Stenson an added insight into Leigh – an understanding of her toughness, her wariness. When he was well enough, he patrolled the perimeter with her, stabbing a machete or a stick through the foreheads of the dead that lingered too close to the fence-line. He expected more of the dead to congregate but she showed him a rope that they had strung through the high windows of several buildings so that they could rattle a bunch of cans and tins a distance away – to lure the dead away when they threatened to come too close.

"Smart thinking," he remarked. "We could also find some car alarms – put those to work, too to lure them away from us."

Their group was small – a dozen or so. There had been almost thirty people at one point according to Mouse, but they had lost many during the last attack. All the children. All the sick. Now only the strongest of them remained. At the warehouse now were Dr Flannery, Leigh, Mouse, Dean, Ken, Monica, a young woman named Luisa and a young red-headed man named Sam who had nodded at him but hadn't spoken with him yet.

There were half a dozen others that were apparently on a scouting mission for supplies that he hadn't met yet. "We're expecting them back soon, God willing," Luisa remarked and Stenson reflected on the emptiness of the concept of a benevolent God these days.

"You'll meet them when they get back," Leigh told him.

"We keep very quiet here," Leigh told him as they patrolled the perimeter one morning. "There aren't enough of us left to stand up to another attack so we have to act smart. We scout during the days when it's safer, hunker down at night. If we're followed when returning, we make sure we lead the Walkers away from this warehouse."

"We should let Command know that we have a possible cure … they'd come back for us for sure," he told her earnestly.

"It would also lead any other predators to us that might also be listening on the airwaves …"

"I can convey the message in a way that non-military can't understand," he pointed out.

"What makes you think some of the predators out there don't have military training, soldier?" she asked him. She'd seen some pretty fucked up shit in her time. "You've been in your little DDC cocoon – me? I've seen the way people have turned on one another … seen the way women have become a commodity. I've seen cannibalism …" She shuddered.

"We have to try – you can't stay here forever," he told her, indicating the warehouse. 

"Sit down, shut up and let me check out your ankle," she ordered him.

"Yes, miss," he said obediently, sitting on a bench and pulling up one trouser leg so that she could unwrap his ankle and examine the wound. It was healing well. The scar from the bite mark would never go away but the skin was healthy again and the area no longer hurt. He felt stronger than ever and had refused the offer of another transfusion from Leigh.

"You look like you need it more than me," he told her bluntly. She was much smaller than him. Slight and short – curved in the right places but still pint-sized compared to him, barely coming up to his shoulder. As she crouched in front of him, he stared down at the top of her head, saw the way the sun burnished her thick black hair that she had pulled back in a careless pony tail.

Despite the sunniness of the day, she was all covered up – long sleeves and jeans. "Is that for protection or are you covering up your scars?" he asked her suddenly. She looked up at him from where she crouched on the ground.

"Bit of both, soldier," she replied. They crossed to the fence and killed some more Infected who were gathering at the east corner of the fence-line, using machetes and long sticks to punch through the thick skull bone into the brain. Leigh had a cloth wrapped around her mouth and nose to filter the stench.

Two weeks after his arrival, it was like he'd always been there – settling into a routine, doing his share of clean-up duty, patrolling. None of them had fired a shot since he'd been there – the noise would have brought the Infected down upon them. They used other methods – distraction, diversion, long poles with sharpened ends, shields to push the dead back … 

"What's that?" he asked one day when a glint of a mirror flashed from a distant building.

"Rui and the others are coming back," she told him briefly. "I'll go," she told Dr Flannery. 

"I'll come, too," Mouse volunteered with alacrity. He was devoted to Leigh and had developed a hero worship for Stenson as well that the young private found a little embarrassing.

"And me," Stenson spoke and the others stared at him.

"I don't need – "

"Bring him with you, Leigh," Dr Flannery instructed her and she shrugged her shoulders. 

"Fine – but make sure you keep up, soldier," she told him with a crooked smile.


	3. More introductions

The three of them went and scaled the wall that took them out of the warehouse perimeter and to the top of an adjacent building.

They jogged lightly across the roof-tops, following a path that was clearly familiar to the other, two. Stenson scanned the horizon alertly – taking in the empty streets, abandoned cars and barricades. Here and there he saw clumps of the dead congregating, no prey in sight so they stood and waited.

It was the first time they had left the warehouse compound since he'd arrived. Looking around, the area surrounding them looked more like a war-torn no-man’s land rather than a city. Abandoned sandbag fortifications sat next to empty armoured personnel carriers. The charred black frames of burnt-out houses poured grey ash into the air. Everywhere he looked, metal husks of overturned cars with broken windows littered the street and driveways. The ground was riddled with craters, and among it all lay the countless bodies of the deceased. He knew that there were survivors out there somewhere, but it was hard to believe it … at this point, it looked as though only the dead and the undead occupied the streets of San Diego.

"I'm fine," Leigh replied as Stenson reached down to try to pull her up to the next roof-top. He said nothing but gave her a very speaking look and she rolled her eyes and accepted his offer of assistance, scrambling up as he pulled. She landed lightly and they continued running.

His stride was longer than hers and Mouse's so he deliberately shortened his stride so that they could keep pace. As they ran towards the spot he had seen the signal, he wondered what they would find.

On the rooftop of a low-rise apartment block, he saw a tall, lanky man step out from behind a wall and his hand went to his pistol immediately.

"It's Rui," Leigh told him sharply and he looked at the dark-haired man with dark eyes who studied him very warily.

"It's good to see you again," Leigh said, coming forward to hug him.

"Same – who's the new guy?" Rui asked suspiciously, hugging her but glancing over her shoulder to stare at Stenson.

"Private Michael Stenson – from the DDC. He's joined our group," Leigh told him. "You can trust him. Where's everyone else?"

"Round here," Rui said, gesturing behind the wall and they followed him to where four people were standing guard around one young woman who was lying on the ground, pale and still.

"What happened to Juniper?" Leigh demanded, crouching beside the young woman whose eyes fluttered open.

"I fucked up," she mumbled, lifting her shirt to show her friend the bloody teeth-marks on her stomach. Fortunately her attacker hadn't managed to get in more than a bite – it could have been far worse and it would have been harder to survive extensive tissue damage or organ loss.

"Patched her up as best we could, but she's developed a pretty bad infection," Rui told her grimly. 

"Juniper's resistant, too but a bite weakens you and there are plenty of other nasties in their teeth and blood that can hurt us," Leigh explained to Stenson.

"This is Mark," she gestured at the lanky African-American who nodded briefly in Stenson's direction. "Rui, Juniper … this is Cally," she said and curly-haired brunette with pale eyes also nodded to acknowledge him. "Joe and Ash," she indicated a well-built middle-aged man who was built like a football player and a slightly older man whose thinning blond hair gleamed in the sun.

"We were able to grab some supplies and bring them here, but then Juniper got bit so we called it quits and came back …" Rui told them in a low voice.

"Sorry," Juniper said weakly.

"Don't be stupid," Rui told her harshly, even as worry tightened his face.

"It's going to be hard getting her back to the warehouse if she can't walk," Leigh replied.

"You can strap her to my back," Stenson volunteered and after a bit of discussion, they opted for this solution. Juniper wouldn't have been a featherweight at the best of times and now, she hung like a deadweight from his back but Stenson grinned nonetheless. "Let's go," he told them.

The others grabbed the supplies and they made their gradual way back to the warehouse. It took a lot longer than usual and Stenson had perspiration pouring down his face by the time they were almost back at the warehouse.

"Sorry – will try to lose some weight," the young woman whispered against his ear and he grinned.

"You're all right," he reassured her.

"Fuck," Mouse muttered when they arrived back at the building overlooking the warehouse. There were dozens and dozens of Infected swarming around the edges of the perimeter and spilling into the warehouse itself. They could see that the rest of the group had pulled up the ladders and were trapped in the loft area and preparing to make their escape.

The roof of the building to which Dr Flannery's group was escaping was not accessible from where Leigh and her group were standing.

"Juniper needs medical treatment asap," Leigh muttered in a low voice. "Mouse and Mark– you come with me – we'll go and trigger the alarms to lead the dead away … soldier – as soon as the coast is clear, get Juniper to Dr Flannery."

Before Stenson could protest, the three had already left the rooftop and were clambering down the side of the building to street level. He watched them run down the streets in the direction of the street where they had a series of cars with car alarms set up.

In a matter of minutes, the loud, demanding sounds of the car alarms could be heard and some of the infected began making their way towards the source of the sound. Stenson gently put Juniper down on the roof. 

"Now that they've thinned the herd, let's see if we can help them out a little more," he said grimly and made his way down to street level as well. He leapt down lightly, landing on the roof of a van where he began making noises to call the dead to him. As they swarmed around the van, he shoved his machete through their skulls with grim efficiency, downing dozens of them that way while avoiding their grasping hands.

He made more of a clamour as he saw Dr Flannery running with Rui across the road, carrying a medical bag. A group of Infected followed them determinedly and Stenson banged his machete against the roof of the van, attracting their attention. A few came towards him and he leapt down from the van and took them out but half a dozen still remained in determined pursuit of the doctor who showed signs of tiring.

Running towards them, he lopped off the hand of the walker that was reaching out to grab Flannery's arm before impaling the walker's head on his machete. "Go!" he ordered them tersely and did away with several more, giving the doctor and Rui enough time to scramble up the side of the building, pulling the ladder up behind them so that none of the Infected could follow.

While some of them continued to paw at the wall that Rui and Dr Flannery had just climbed, the remainder turned their attention towards the tall army private who was holding a bloody machete.

He debated whether to hold his ground but elected instead to take to his heels and run away from the warehouse with the dead in pursuit. He ran towards the clamour that he could hear from a distance, taking care to keep an eye on where he was going so as not to trip himself up.

"Soldier – over here," he heard Leigh call to him and he glanced to the left and saw the three of them standing in a fire escape along the side of an apartment block. They lowered the ladder for him to clamber up before pulling the ladder up as the Dead came swarming around them, conflicted between the tasty humans and the noise emerging from the strange structures across the road that resembled makeshift Newton's Cradles made up of cans, tins and bottles.

"Did you make those?" he asked, gesturing at the structures and Leigh nodded. 

"Cally and Ash put them together – they'll keep banging away for a few hours yet before they run out of steam," she told him. "Did we give them enough time?" she asked and Stenson nodded.

"Dr Flannery and Rui are on the roof with Juniper now."

"We should try to lure the rest of the Infected away from the warehouse while it's still light," Mark commented.

"Roger that," Stenson confirmed.

*

"Not bad, soldier," Leigh commented, later that evening when the two of them sat on the edge of the left area, overlooking the newly cleared warehouse. They were both exhausted and grubby after hours of effort but like the rest of the group, felt a sense of elation over having managed to reclaim the warehouse.

Again and again, the group had lured the Dead away from the warehouse towards the alley with the tins and cans and Stenson had methodically used a cross-bow to take them down. Mouse, Ken and Dean had scampered amidst the dead bodies when the coast was clear to retrieve the arrows, scrambling up to where Stenson stood to wipe down the arrows and re-equip him.

Leigh and Joe had helped to lure the dead while Mark, Sam and Cally helped to contain and kill the dead that weren't shot by Stenson. After several hours, the mountain of bodies grew and eventually, they had disposed of all of the dead who had invaded the warehouse. The next couple of hours was spent dragging the bodies of the dead away from the Warehouse and putting them where their decay would not affect the small group of survivors.

"We've never had an escape without a loss before," she remarked as he thanked Monica gratefully for the bowl of stew she placed in his hands before moving onto give a bowl to Sam who was sitting next to Juniper in the infirmary. The young woman had almost died from blood loss but following a transfusion was now stable although the infection was spreading.

"We're coming to the end of our antibiotic supplies, Leigh," Stenson had heard overheard Flannery telling Leigh in a low voice.

"We've already emptied the clinics near us and you know what happened the last time we tried to go out further Sean …" her eyes and voice were bleak. 

"I know .. but …"

"I'll see what we can do," she told him.

Despite her earlier tension, she was smiling now, though as they ate their dinner in a companionable manner. 

They had spent the day running through the dark, rubble-strewn city streets around the warehouse, swarms of the living dead on their heels, hungering for flesh as they howled.

Running was hard when abandoned cars and debris littered every inch of the road. On top of all that, an armed hostile civilian or flesh-eating monster could, and often did, jump out at you at any second. Having Stenson with them had improved their skills and tactics immeasurably and Leigh and the young soldier worked well together.

*

"How did you discover the cure?" he asked curiously and the older man exhaled slowly.

"It's not really a cure ... it doesn't work every time," he told Stenson regretfully. "Desperation drove me to it ... and it just happened that my wife proved to be resistant. When she was bitten, I bled her - she survived but I suspect that this was pure luck. I'd never heard of anyone surviving a bite before and I monitored her closely. To this day, I am not sure how or why she was resistant. I was able to save two other people with Liv's blood after she was bitten and she also donated a small quantity - this was when I still had access to proper medical facilities. When our younger daughter Natalie was bitten, I bled her and transfused her ... She was only two and she was very weak." He swallowed hard. "She did not survive the process."

The doctor's mouth quivered and his voice became a whisper. It was at that point that Stenson realised that Flannery was considerably younger than his original estimate - that his hair was prematurely grey and his features prematurely lined. The outbreak had aged everyone.

"And your wife? What happened?" Stenson asked. It was almost cruel to ask but he had to know what had become of the woman who had showed the initial resistance to the virus.

Flannery looked down at the dirt on the ground and then up into Stenson's eyes. "Despite having gone through ... so much ... she was unable to continue after the death of our daughter. The fact that Natalie died by my hand ... my wife took her own life," Flannery told him and drew a hand across his eyes, blinking rapidly. "By then, I had half a dozen people with the group who had survived the procedure and had developed a resistance so I was able to continue despite the loss of Liv ..."

"Are all of us in this group resistant?" Stenson asked curiously and Flannery nodded. 

"Yes - although we've lost many along the way ... at least a dozen people did not survive the procedure. Resistance also does not stop you bleeding to death or dying of shock if you are torn apart - you will die if your throat or internal organs are torn out .. you will die from an untreated infection. But what it means is that a bite or a scratch will not signify certain death in the same way it does for others."

"If we're careful - we can survive," Stenson commented. "You've done well but there's more we can do to protect ourselves. Alert systems, distractions ..."

Flannery nodded. "Leigh knew we needed someone like you. We were attacked by the living a few weeks before you joined us. During one of our foraging missions, they killed two of our people and kidnapped two of the females in the group. We don't have the skills or the numbers to fight something like that."

"Do you know where this group hides out?" Stenson asked casually and Flannery nodded. 

"In a different area of town ... we strayed too far during our our search... we won't make that mistake again. We tried to get the girls back but …" He swallowed hard. "By the time we got there, it was too late. They were gone."

"You've done amazing things, doctor," Stenson said quietly. "We all have you to thank for our lives. If we can find a way to communicate with the Pacific Fleet - I can guarantee that they will permit us to join them."

"But would we be any safer out there, Michael?" Flannery asked him urgently.

"They're looking for a safe area to moor - to grow food, to try to find a cure. They need you ... they need our blood."

"I'm happy for you to try to contact them as long as it doesn't bring everyone else down on us - the last thing we need is to be descended upon by looters and other hostiles."

"OK, I'll be careful," Stenson agreed. They had equipment that they had salvaged from abandoned military vehicles and with some tinkering from could now receive and transmit. Problem was, there were other unfriendly ears that also had access to the same seized equipment.


End file.
